In this episode, this tempting creature introduces you to layer masks and actually demos how one can use the new (CS4) Masks palette. Although y’all know by now Deke’s feelings — that the Masks palette is not essential to the task of creating and editing layer masks — it can nevertheless be quite helpful in this situation, permitting you to apply powerful selection functions, such as Color Range and Refine Edge, to layer masks as well as make temporary modifications. And the Masks palette happens to be exclusively applicable to layer masks, so that makes it a win-win for everybody.

Oh dear

Finding nothing online. Prefs file is not edit-friendly. (Can open in NotePad or the like, but I’m not finding much to work with.) Do me a favor, choose the Print command and tell me what the resolution value is saying (in the Scaled Print Size area).

Fabulacious - 100% pure genius…

...you should work for ACME! If I weren’t covered in poo, I’d give you a hug… Heck, lemme give you hug anyway (said with all the love one guy can give to another without the horse and the mountain).

Regional settings did it - caught red handed and with a thong in a purse.

See, I’m in Canada. That means we’re officially metric by executive decision. Only, no one ever bothered to tell us, the mindless minions, so we still scurry about our hectic lives oblivious of a centimeter.

Whoops, pardon - here in Canada it’s spelled centimetre.

Occasionally someone here will bump into a stray “centimeter” (I’m looking to get kicked out of the country, dontcha know), but since we can’t really see them we just stare into an empty half inch wondering what possibly could have caused such a hiccup in space-time continuum.

Microsoft had other plans though. It planted the invisible centimeters into the operating system that are triggered by regional settings. Settings that are officially metric, even if in reality they don’t exist, just like the Hobbits, ET’s and southern democrats.

But rest assured, there is cure. Right here at Deke.com.

Thanks Fabulacious, you saved me a system restore.

Nice work, man

Hug…

accepted, if you don’t smell you ain’t no guy. But hold the applause, teh internetz did most of the work, I stumbled upon an older article that explained how Framemaker uses regional settings to determine its default units. Thought I’d give it a shot in PhoShop and voilà, inchness all over the place - glad it worked for you, too.

Man hugs?

Pfft…

you gals will never fully grasp the tacit yet strong common bond within the - of course strictly platonic - male liaison. I sense jealousy here! Anyways, as you have proven your qualities before I crafted you this fancy bar to conceal your shortcomings.

Open GL enabled document windows

At the risk of exposing my amateur status as both a photoshop CS4 user and a blogger (this is my first), I have a question for you. I have been working through, and enjoying, your Adobe Photoshop CS4 one-on-one. I am now up to chapter 5 and when I try to do the exercise using Rotate View with the crop tool, I get the warning “Could not complete your request because it only works with Open GL enabled document windows” as soon as I try to drag in the window with the rotate tool which at that point looks like a zero with a slash mark. I tried using a few of my own photos and got the same result, so I guess the problem is with my document window. I faithfully put in your suggested settings at the beginning of the book. Did I miss something and/or is there a way to make it so I can do the procedure with the Woman smiling file as well as my own? I would appreciate any help you can give me!

Brian’s not the Messiah

Petra’s most likely nailed it

Brian- try opening Photoshop preferences (cmd-K or ctrl-K) and checking the performance tab. There should be a section for GPU settings and a checkbox for “Enable OpenGL Drawing.” If you can, make sure the checkbox is enabled. If the section is grayed out, hover over that section with your mouse. You will see a dire warning that hardware accelleration is unavailable in the description box. You will need to update your video driver or (most likely) your whole video card.

My geriatric beast

Thank you to everyone for the tips. We went to preferences and the “Enable OpenGL drawing” checkbox was grayed out, so we did auto-search and loaded an updated driver. That didn’t work, so it looks like I might have a trip to Frye’s in my future (yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!) to get a new video card. The beast’s vital statistics are as follows: 2 gigs RAM, 3.8 GHz processor and the video card is an ATI Radeon X600. Any thoughts on what I should get to replace it? Remember, tomorrow is Valentine’s Day so money is no object.

Any current model video card

should support OpenGL rendering. Remember however, that the purpose of PS handing-off the video-rendering to hardware is to make PS run faster and scale smoother vs. software rendering so more memory would be prefered. Video cards are something that you can spend as much money as you want on (much like camera gear)

Here’s a list of Adobe tested cards

Ancient doorway.psd

This photo for chapter 7, exercise “Employing a Knockout Mask” won’t open on my Vista machine inside photoshop. I get the message, “Could not complete your request because an unexpected end of file was encountered.”

It also views as just a psd icon in Bridge.

Any ideas I’ll take them. Knockouts are one of the kinds of masks I was particularly interested in learning.

Thanks, Cris

Appears to be a problem

Cris- I checked the O’Reilly website and its already been reported here:

http://oreilly.com/catalog/errataunconfirmed.csp?isbn=9780596516154

Unfortunately the site doesn’t list the date of the report. I’m not quite as far as you in the book, but I tried to open the file this morning and got the same issue. May be a manufacturing problem with the DVD.

Channels & Masks Palette

I have just received ther excellent CS4 Channels & Masks book and I’m trying to set up the Channels & Masks Palette on my Vista laptop. Having followed the set up instructions and accepted the T & Cs I get a message ‘You do not have appropriate permissions…...............’ you get the idea!

What do I need to do!

I am a private individual and I own the laptop I’m working on and it’s not connected to an outside network.

Thanks for your help.

Avoid vista like the plague that it is!

But seriously, I think it has something to do with the User Account Permissions settings. Not being a vista user I can’t point you in a specific direction, but I recall someone more knowledgable than I addressing the issue elsewhere on this site.

Thank you Petra and Jeremy

I really appreciate your help! I am about to go to Fry’s armed with my list of Adobe tested video cards and my Valentine is even encouraging me to get the most memory that I can. Yes, he is a keeper. I must admit, however, that he seems thrilled with the prospect of visiting that store, so it may be more than love (for me anyway) being in the air…...

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Deke McClelland

Self-appointed expert on all things graphics and imaging, here to answer your questions and serve your needs. More dekeBio here.